Report from Engine Co. 82 (30 page)

I am in the street, resting and breathing short, regimented gulps of air. Men pass by and ask how I’m feeling, but I just
nod to them. I don’t feel like speaking. I feel like I have climbed a mountain, and although I have given up all of my strength,
I will bask in the silent, personal satisfaction of victory. I have done what I have been trained to do, and in the doing
I have trained for the next time. My throat is congested, and as I spit the black phlegm of my trade I realize again the price
I—all of us—pay for the victory. Is it worth it, this brutal self-flagellation, this constant ingestion of black poison, this
exhaustion, this aging? Firefighting is a job. It is not a spiritual vocation. Hundreds of years have passed since medieval
ascetics whipped themselves for glory. No, it is not worth it. Garbage men are paid as much as we, prison guards and subway
policemen reap the same benefits. We get satisfaction. Yet… yet, this is what we do, what we do well. We could not do anything
else with such a great sense of accomplishment.

The ambulance comes, and men pass by me carrying the three boys—three shaken whimpering boys, left alone by their mother in
the care of a ten-year-old girl, their sister. Billy-o passes by with the girl in his arms. She was frightened. The fire-escape
window was blocked by a chest of drawers and an iron gate, and she jumped from the fourth floor window. What thoughts must
have been going through this little girl’s head as she climbed over the sill to jump fifty feet to an almost certain death?
With good reason have Christians chosen fire as the metaphor of hell. What could be more fearful than the slow, agonizing
crisping of skin, the searing of the lungs until the throat passage closes? If only someone had called us sixty seconds earlier—just
one minute sooner, Richie would have been there in time to talk to her. The ambulance hurries away. Billy-o sits next to me
on the warm slate of the stoop steps. “God,” he sighs, “was that kid lucky. It looks like all she has is a broken leg.” I
look at Billy-o, at the worn frontpiece of his helmet, smoke-darkened and heat-blistered. I can just barely make out the identifying
number of his company—the black numerals that were once white and bold, the number 31 on the black background that was once
red, and signifies a Ladder Company. I don’t speak, and he puts his gloved hand on my knee as he rises. “She hit a clothesline
on the way down,” he says as he re-enters the building.

The day has begun to come alive. I have watched the mist around the street lights fade as the morning light appeared. It is
now 7:00
A.M.,
and the kitchen is filled with men and empty coffee cups. Engine 85 has returned from the third alarm, and stories are being
exchanged about fires. Billy Valenzio has relieved Knipps at housewatch, and Knipps and I sit at a table talking of the first
day we walked into the quarters of Engine 82. He, Kelsey, and I were assigned together. Kelsey is sleeping, his eye bandaged.
Knipps will drive him home when the tour is done. Tony Indio has been admitted into the hospital.

An alarm comes in, and the men of Engine 85 move out as Valenzio hollers “Eighty-five only.” Minutes pass, and the bells ring
again. Box 2743, the inevitable 2743—Charlotte and 170th Streets. Valenzio yells, in an attempt at early morning humor, “Eighty-two
and Thirty-one goes, you know where. Chief goes too.”

We reach the corner of Charlotte Street, and see an old man lying at the base of the alarm box. His throat is cut, and he
lies in a small sea of his own plasma. We are too late to help him for his head is thrown to one side, and I can see into
the hole in his neck. His eyes have rolled back under his open lids, lost forever. Nothing could have helped him but the prevention
of the murder. McCartty comes over with a blanket, and lays it gently over him, shielding him from the filth of Charlotte
Street.

A passerby stands next to us, a middle-aged black with graying hair. His face is sullen, but distinguished and proud. “He
was a nice man,” he says looking down at the blanketed body.

“Do you know him?” Lieutenant Welch asks. “Do you know his name?”

“No,” the man replies, “I don’t know his name. They called him ‘the old Jew,’ that’s all. He owns the laundromat, and he came
here every morning with a bag of change for the machines. I guess they killed him for a bag of nickels and dimes.”

Ten years ago the South Bronx was a mostly Jewish and Irish neighborhood, but as they progressed economically in the American
system they moved from the tenements to better buildings in the North Bronx, or to small ranch houses in the surburbs of Long
Island. As they moved out, blacks and Puerto Ricans moved in. As blacks and Puerto Ricans moved in, the less successful whites
moved out to other tenements, but in white neighborhoods. There are still bars in the neighborhood named “Shannon’s,” and
“The Emerald Gem,” but they are frequented by men with black faces, and there are signs in Spanish saying “Iglesia Christiana
de Dios,” hanging obtrusively in front of stain-glassed Stars of David on abandoned synagogues. But, some merchants have lingered
on, working hard for a dollar-by-dollar survival. Like this old man whose last act in life was to call the Fire Department,
to pull the alarm that would keep him alive.

There is a trail of blood from the laundromat to the alarm box, a distance of ten steps. There are footprints in the trail,
placed there by careless passersby, who pause momentarily on their way to work, ask a question or two, and continue their
journeys.

The ambulance comes, and we place the body on an antiseptic, sheeted stretcher. McCartty folds the red-stained blanket as
he steps from the ambulance. It will have to go to the cleaners, or to a laundromat. The police have arrived, and are talking
to Chief Niebrock. Our job is finished. From the back step of the apparatus I can see the old man’s keys, hanging, still and
forgotten, from the padlock on the door of his business place.

It is ten minutes to eight now, and the sun begins to break through threatening clouds. In another hour I will take a shower,
change into clean clothes, and drive home for a day of sleep. Right now though, there is nothing to do but drink still more
coffee, and wait for the men of the day tour to arrive for work.

Charlie McCartty, as usual, is the center of attention in the kitchen. Most of us are sitting wearily in chairs, trying to
relax after a hectic night tour, but McCartty is pacing up and down the kitchen floor berating a probationary fireman for
not cleaning the kitchen.

“Ninety percent of this job is professional work, fighting fires, and making inspections, and all that,” he says, “but the
other ten percent is pure bullshit.”

The probie, Frank Parris, starts to grin as he collects the empty cups from the tables.

“The ten percent bullshit,” Charlie continues, “is your responsibility, and that is to keep this kitchen clean, and make sure
there is fresh coffee at all times. If ya do that right, then maybe we’ll teach ya about the other ninety percent.”

Parris is one of the most conscientious probies we have ever had in the big house, and he knows, as well as all of us, that
Charlie is just making noise. Parris wipes the tables with a sponge as Charlie continues to pace, and mutter.

“When I was a probie, I did everything I could to make the senior men happy, but none of you guys would know about that—that
was in the days of leather lungs and wooden fire hydrants, when horses pulled the rigs. I even used to service the mares when
they got restless. That’s when a probie was a probie.” Charlie is a pleasant diversion, and he has got the men laughing, and
interested in his soliloquy. But, three sharp rings on the department phone redirect everyone’s attention.

“Eighty-two and Thirty-one, get out.” Valenzio’s voice carries through the firehouse. “And the Chief,” he adds. “1280 Kelly
Street.”

We can smell the smoke as the pumper leaves quarters. Up Tiffany Street, and down 165th Street. As we turn into Kelly the
smoke has banked down to the street, making it difficult to see even ten feet away. Valenzio pulls the pumper to the first
hydrant he sees. We will have to stretch around the apparatus, but at least we know we have a hydrant that works. The building
is occupied, and we will have to get water on the fire fast.

Engine 73 arrives and helps us with the stretch. Between the lifts and banks of the smoke, we can see that the job is on the
top floor, five flights up. But, there is enough manpower for the stretch now, so I drop the hose and head for the mask bin.
Valenzio has the pumper connected to the hydrant by the time I have the mask donned, and Jerry Herbert has the aerial ladder
of the truck up, and placed by the top floor fire escape. He is climbing up it as I enter the building.

The fifth floor is enveloped with smoke, and I can barely see in front of me. Billy-o and McCartty are working on the door
of the burning apartment, but it is secured inside with a police lock—a long steel bar, stretched from one side to the other
like the gate of Fort Apache. The smoke is brutal, and Billy-o has a coughing fit between ax swings. Charlie pulls on the
halligan with all his strength, as Billy-o hammers with the head of the ax. Finally, the door begins to move, and Charlie
and Billy-o work their tools, one complementing the other, like a computed machine, until one side of the door is free. Still
coughing and choking, Charlie puts his shoulder to the door, and it swings inward, and out of its brackets to the floor.

Charlie and Billy-o dive to the floor, for the fire lunges out to the hall. Willy Boyle has the nozzle. I ask him if he wants
me to take it, since I have the mask, but he replies that he thinks he can make it.

“Let’s go,” Lieutenant Welch says.

Boyle makes it about ten feet into the apartment, but it is an old building, and the plaster falls freely from the ceiling
in large pieces. Boyle’s helmet is thrown from his head by the falling ceiling. Lieutenant Welch orders me up to take the
line. Boyle has to back out, because it is unsafe to operate in an inferno like this without something protecting the head.

Herbert has entered the apartment from the front. He can hear McCartty and Billy-o banging at the door. All but the end room
of the apartment is burning, and the smoke and the fire are being drawn there by the open window. Jerry crawls along the floor,
realizing that the room could go up in a second. He hears a slight moan, coming from the far side of the bed that stands in
the middle of the room. The room is blind dark with smoke, and Jerry crawls to the sound, patting his hand before him as he
goes. He reaches the other side of the bed, and the fire begins to lap at the ceiling above him. The smoke has taken everything
from him, but he knows he can’t back out now.

His hand gropes searching before him, until at last he feels the soft give of a woman’s body. There is a child by her side.
Jerry picks the child up and hurries on his knees to the window. As he nears it, he sees Rittman enter, and he yells to him.
Rittman takes the child in his arms, and climbs out of the apartment. Jerry knows that he is in trouble, for the fire is coming
at him fast. He grabs the woman under the arms, and pulls her to the window, keeping his head as low as he can. She is a slight
woman, and he pulls her easily. As he lifts her out to the fire escape he can hear the front door give way, and at that moment
the room lights up completely in fire.

I am swinging the nozzle back and forth across the ceiling. The floor is cluttered with debris, furniture, fallen plaster,
and it is difficult moving forward.

“Keep pushing, Dennis. Keep pushing,” Lieutenant Welch says.

“Give me some more line,” I yell to him through the mask, and he yells back to Royce and Knipps. We reach the front room,
and as I lift my leg to get a better support, the floor gives way and my leg goes down, caught between the smoldering boards
of the floor. Lieutenant Welch sees what has happened, and calls Royce up to the nozzle.

“Easy now,” I say to Knipps as he helps me. “Just pull me out, easy.” The smoke is lifting as Royce gets the last room, and
I rip my face piece off to breathe freely. Lieutenant Welch yells back to me, “Go down and take the mask off, and check for
injuries.”

I start to move out, but the way is blocked by the men of Ladder 31. They are kneeling in the middle of the hall. “It’s a
baby,” one of them says. I go to a window to get some air. The mask is heavy on my shoulders, and I want to sleep. Breathe.
It’s a baby. Breathe deep. I can feel my stomach moving. I had to crawl over it. In the middle of the hall. Breathe. The air
tastes good. We all had to crawl over it. My mouth is full of coffee and veal. The taste is horrible as my stomach empties,
and I can feel the terror of a thousand children as I lean across the sill.

A few minutes pass until the hall is clear. I go down a few steps and take my mask off. I lay it on the stairs, and pull my
pants down. I examine the top of my leg, but it’s only bruised. I lift the heavy canister of air, the self-contained breathing
apparatus, and carry it in my arms down the stairs.

Billy-o is sitting on the vestibule steps, waiting for the ambulance. The baby is wrapped in a borrowed bedspread, and lies
like a little bundle in Billy-o’s arms. A little package of dead life, never having had a chance to live.

I lay the mask on the floor, and sit below him on the bottom step. I look up, and he shakes his head. Mucus is hanging and
drying beneath his nose, and his face is covered with grime and the dark spots of burnt paint chips. He feels, no he knows,
that the baby could have been saved.

“How the hell can a fire get going like that before someone turns in an alarm?” He continues to shake his head in dejection.
“And that police lock. What a mark of the poor when they have to barricade themselves in like that.”

“What is it?” I ask him, looking toward his arms.

“It’s a little girl about two years old. She never had a chance, but at least they got her mother and sister out.”

“Did you give her mouth to mouth?” I ask.